Another dally on the Essex Way: energy gels? Or mulled wine?

On Sunday, the lovely @mia79gbr drove all the way to Essex to join me on a 17 mile run on the Essex Way.

I promised her 17 miles of running, mulled wine, pubs, and navigation.  I delivered on 2 of those promises.

She promised good chat, entertaining mishaps and expert lighting with her head torch!  She delivered on 2 of these too.  You'll have to read to the end to find out what.

We started at around 3pm... Yes, we are fast approaching the shortest day of the year.  And even though Sarah is speedy, she couldn't get me running at 17 miles an hour, so, we needed head torches.  They're at the ready- hers is much bigger than mine.  I have head torch envy!

Those of you who know @mia79gbr will know she has the trademark on luminous pink running kit, but not this time!!! Mwah hahahaha!  I posed like a gameshow host in front of the sign marking the start of our run, and instructed @mia79gbr of the way marks we were looking out for.  The poppies marking out the Essex way.

We got on with our running, and the light was fast leaving us.  Within half a mile I already took a wrong turn, but we found the path again easily enough.  We continued along the path and were noticing lots of twigs and branches underfoot that were down from storm St Jude a few weeks ago.  Then we came across this tree.  A chilling reminder of quite how strong those winds were

We we're happily chatting away and as usual when I'm running in the countryside, my head was rolling around like one of those nodding dogs.  I looked behind me, and caught a glimpse of this beautiful sunset.  iPhone photos don't do it justice, but I think this was the best image I got

For the next couple of hours as darkness continued to descend, we kept on talking about how long the sunset was taking, not realising that the red glow we could see in the distance was probably light pollution form Colchester, rather than the sun setting!

In the darkness, some of the ploughed fields were particularly tough to run, I was negotiating a tricky section, when I heard this whooshing sound.  It seems we had disturbed a flock of birds... @mia79gbr was nattering about what kind of birds they were whilst I was recovering from my mini heart attack.  I knew exactly what would help, and I'm pretty sure the vineyard was not very far away.  Dedham vale vineyard: http://www.dedhamvalevineyard.com was having a mulled wine day.  It would be rude not to stop really, wouldn't it?  David and I had been there on Saturday and we regularly buy wine from there. The Bacchus and Rose are particularly good.  Sarah and I stopped for a mulled wine each and we had a good chat about various running events with the owners.  Who did recognise me as that crazy girl who sometimes runs thru their vineyard :)

Here's a giraffe

 It was properly pitch black when we left the vinyard, and I realised at this point we didn't have enough miles left to make 17 miles, in addition the navigation from this point on was less familiar to me.  There were a few sections when we had to run through the woods.  Now I think about it, I can't believe how crazy we were, 2 girls of small size running about in woods.  As runners, our spaghetti arms wouldn't help defend us, but hopefully the head torches made us intimidating!

More darkness, and I was starting to fantasise about the pub dinner waiting for us.  This part of the run went passed some lovely churches.  Unfortunately you couldn't picture them very well in the dark, but we did see the cat guarding the church :)

Only about a mile and a half to go from here, and we were mostly on road, I stopped reading the route instructions so thoroughly and took a wrong turn.  So, we ended up in Sufolk! Plus, no so much short changing on miles.  By the time we got to our finishing point, my garmin read 14.78 miles.  Wasn't a good idea to stop now, was it!  We proceeded to run around the war memorial a few times, and then back the way we came.  David thinks we're both crazy.  I think he's right.

It was so great to have such an adventure of a night time run with a great friend :). So often on my jaunts on the Essex way, I'm on my lonesome.  It was great to be able to share the experience with Sarah, and can't wait to join her running some of the Thames Path in the new year :)